Practice Report: men’s basketball

Posted at 6:53 p.m. ET – Eric Lindsey, UK Media Relations

Preparing for a player like Devan Downey can be like trying to figure out a Rubik’s Cube.

“He can shoot it, he’s great in transition, he’s great in half court and he can drive it,” UK Coach Billy Gillispie said. “He finishes plays close to the basket like a 7-foot guy, so he’s just a hard guy to emulate.”

But that’s the task that lays ahead for the men’s basketball team as it prepares for Wednesday’s game against South Carolina. After a day off Sunday, the Wildcats were back at practice Monday afternoon at the Joe Craft Center trying to prepare for Downey and the rest of the Gamecocks.

The problem is, how do you prepare for a guy like Downey, who besides his tiny 5-foot-9 frame, has the total package?

“No disrespect to anyone, but we don’t have anyone like him,” Gillispie said.

Freshman guard Landon Slone did his best Downey impersonation Monday at practice donning Downey’s No. 2 as UK game plans for the Gamecocks. Gillispie said Slone has some similar ball skills to Downey, but it’s near impossible to emulate his speed, athleticism and experience.

“(Downey) is not only able to get into the lane, but he forces help so much that guys are really able to play off him and get easy baskets,” Gillispie said. “They force so much help, not only he but the entire team with the dribble penetration that it puts those guys in great position for offensive rebounding.”

The Wildcats practiced for about an hour and a half and finished just before 5 p.m.

Patrick Patterson, who played Saturday after missing two games because of sprained right ankle, practiced Monday without any soreness in either his ankle or finger.

“He looked like he was (fine Saturday),” Gillispie said. “I thought he played fantastic. I thought he was really good when I watched him play and then when I watched the tape he was even better than that. He did a lot of great things. It looks like he is really fresh and it looks like he is ready for a really, really strong finish to the season.”

Kentucky men’s golf in 10th place after the first round

Posted at 5:32 p.m. ET – Marcus Shanks, UK Media Relations

Kentucky currently sits in 10th place at the Rio Pinar Invitational being held in Orlando, Fla.  

The Wildcats, who will play 36 holes on Monday, have finished their first 18 holes in the 21-team tournament.

Ten teams in the tournament are ranked in the top 75, but thus far, UK has held its own. Senior co-captain Andy Winings is tied for fifth place and leads the Wildcats carding a two-under par. The second tournament of the year for the Wildcats features 13 players ranked in the top 100.

Kentucky is currently playing in the second round. Once the second round is completed a full recap will be posted in UKathletics.com.

Former Wildcat celebrates birthday with career night

Posted at 4:50 p.m. ET – Eric Lindsey, UK Media Relations

Former Wildcat Rajon Rondo celebrated his 23rd birthday Sunday in grand fashion.

Without Kevin Garnett in the lineup, the former Wildcat scored a career-high 32 points to go along with 10 assists in Boston’s 128-108 victory over the Phoenix Suns. Playing without Kevin Garnett, Rondo led the Celtics to their 45th victory of the season.

“As Rondo goes, this team goes,” Boston forward Paul Pierce said. “If he plays as well as he’s playing, then there’s no way we can lose.”

Giving up not an option

Posted at 4:04 p.m. ET – Eric Lindsey, UK Media Relations

The UK women's basketball team will honor its three seniors – Eleia Roddy, Carly Ormerod and Jenn'e Jackson – on Thursday night against Georgia.

It will mark the final home game of season for the three seniors, but for Roddy, it will mark the end of an emotional up and down career at UK.

The center from Columbus Ohio has had to battle four surgeries to her right knee during her career at UK. At one point she thought about hanging up her sneakers and calling it a career, but she battled back from hundreds, even thousands of hours of physical therapy to have a dominating senior season.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Roddy and a couple of the coaches to talk about what she went through in her career at UK. Read Roddy's full story here.

UK picks up a vote in both polls

Posted at 2:34 p.m. ET – Eric Lindsey

Apparently at least a couple of people think Kentucky might be worthy of an NCAA bid.

The Wildcats picked up a receiving vote in both the Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today polls. It was just a single vote in both polls, but if you want to get technical about rankings, that means UK was 43rd in the AP and 40th in the ESPN/USA Today Poll.

Again, that's getting technical about it. But if we want to venture down that road, does calling the Wildcats a top-45 team mean they're deserving of a bid in a tournament that is supposed to be best 65 teams in the country?

Just some food for thought.

SEC Coaches Teleconference

Posted at 12:21 p.m. ET – Eric Lindsey, UK Media Relations

The race for the Southeastern Conference East Division got a little less crowded Saturday when UK thumped Tennessee, but the picture is still pretty blurry. Three teams – UK, South Carolina and Florida – are still tied atop the standings.

With four games to go, every game obviously has huge implications, none maybe more so than the UK-South Carolina game Wednesday. Both teams’ head coaches were on the SEC Coaches Teleconference this morning. Here are a few highlights from what they said:

Billy Gillispie

• Gillispie called South Carolina a fun team to watch “except when you have to play against them.” When asked what makes them a fun team to watch, Gillispie said: “They always have five guys out there that really understand what their roles are and they have five guys that are capable of scoring either in the paint or beyond the arc. It’s a very balanced team from beyond the 3. They make a little over seven 3s a game in conference. They’re really doing a fantastic job on the offensive boards. They play hard on defense and they well play well together. They have a great point guard that starts everything on both ends whether it’s on offense of defense.”

• As Selection Sunday looms on the horizon, questions have started to arise about the selection committee that will put together the 65-team tournament. Of the 10 members, only four have “basketball backgrounds.” Gillsipie was asked what he thought about the lack of basketball experience on the committee. “I don’t know what the makeup has been in the past,” Gillispie said. “The people that are on there every single year whether you’ve been happy or disappointed – and there is always going to be some disappointment no matter how many teams are in there – it seems like they do the most thorough job you can possibly do. I have just always been amazed at how well that they do pick the field. I would think that they have some very well defined guidelines on what it takes to get into the tournament. Whether they’re basketball people or not, they’re still basketball people or they wouldn’t be involved in the committee in the first place.”

• Wildcat fans probably don’t need to be told this after watching Devan Downey play UK last time, but anytime the Wildcats face South Carolina, one of the keys is keeping Downey out of the paint. “One of our biggest deals is we always try to keep them out the paint, disallow as much penetration as possible and one the shot goes up, keep the guys off the boards,” Gillispie said. “They do a fantastic job in both those areas. He’s a master of getting into the paint. He’s hard to guard whether he has a ball screen or not. They do a real good job of using the ball screen effectively and they make shots and finish plays.”

Darrin Horn

• It sounds like the Gamecocks have the same mentality that the Wildcats do in terms of watching the standings. “For us to be successful, we’ve got to stay focused on the things that make us good,” Horn said. “We can control standings in how we play, but we can’t control them in terms of where they’re going to be three weeks from now. All you can control is the next game and how you work every day. That’s a mindset and attitude that we want in our program. We’ve been fortunate that we’ve gotten some wins and we are in that position right now, but I don’t think anybody expected us (to be there).”

• Horn said he didn’t even realize at one point last week that it was a four-way tie atop the Southeastern Conference East standings. He said he knew they were near the top but didn’t know who had won or lost the day before.

• Horn talked a little about Downey’s knack for stealing the ball. “I think it’s a combination of great natural instincts and terrific quickness. He’s got quick hands, he’s obviously very, very quick and explosive and he’s got great instincts for when to use those. The thing that’s been great about him this year is that he’s learned to do it in the concept of playing better team defense and being more solid defensively, whereas last year from the film it appeared that it was more roaming around and stealing the basketball just because he could. This year he’s putting up very similar numbers but has really grown tremendously as a defender in terms of being solid and a better team defender.”

• Austin Steed, a 6-foot-8 forward, is expected to play on Wednesday against UK. Steed, who averages 4.1 points and 3.9 rebounds per game, played just four minutes Saturday against Arkansas after going down with an injury. Horn said he Steed suffered a busted lip and is fine.

Weekend wrap-up

Posted at 1:56 a.m. ET – Eric Lindsey, UK Media Relations

I believe this might have been our busiest weekend in UK Athletics since Cat Scratches has been underway. Eight teams were in action this weekend, playing everywhere from Lafayette, La., to right here to Auburn, Ala.

Overall, it was a pretty solid weekend. The baseball team kicked off its season in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and the men’s tennis team completed the Tennessee sweep this weekend with a huge win on Saturday, but for more, let’s get into what each team did:

• Patrick Patterson returned from a right ankle injury to lead the men’s basketball team (19-8, 8-4 Southeastern Conference) to its second victory over Tennessee this season. Patterson scored a game-high 19 points and freshman Darius Miller scored a career-high 17 points to knock the Vols from atop the SEC East Division standings with a 77-58 victory.

• The women’s basketball team (14-13, 4-8 SEC) had just seven players at its disposal after senior center Eleia Roddy went down before the game with flu-like symptoms, but UK nearly completed an improbable comeback Sunday afternoon against Louisiana State. UK rallied from 12 down behind sophomore forward Victoria Dunlap’s 21 points, but Carly Morrow’s 3-pointer to win it in the final seconds was blocked. The Wildcats lost 57-56.

• The No. 31 men’s tennis team brought out the brooms on Saturday, sweeping Tennessee in the third UK-Tennessee matchup of the week (both the men’s and women’s basketball teams had already defeated the Vols). UK used come-from-behind tiebreak rallies to win the match 4-2 over the No. 4 ranked Vols.

• The No. 20 women’s tennis team (7-0) is playing like its 1990. The Wildcats reeled off a 6-1 win for the program’s best start since the 1990 season. 

• In baseball team opened the 2009 season by going 2-2 in its season-opening weekend Myrtle Beach, S.C. The No. 19 Wildcats kicked off the Gary Henderson era with a pair of 8-3 wins, but they ran into trouble in the final two games against Coastal Carolina. A nine-run fifth inning doomed the Wildcats in the final game, falling 14-5.

• It’s becoming more and more clear that the softball team (5-4) is going to give teams headaches in the SEC this year. The Wildcats continued their strong start with a 2-2 record this weekend at the Mardi Gras Invitational in Lafayette, La. For the second straight week, freshman Chanda Bell capped the weekend with a sensational pitching performance. Bell struck out 11 on Sunday in a win over Connecticut and she nearly led UK to an upset win over No. 20 Louisiana-Lafayette earlier in the week, a game in which the Wildcats dropped in nine innings.

• Eight school records fell last week at the SEC Championships for the swimming and diving team. If it weren’t for the sheer number of records, I would post them all, but you can find out the eight records on the swimming and diving homepage. The women finished the championships in ninth overall and the men seventh.

• The gymnastics team (2-6, 0-6 SEC) captured a season-high 48.750 on the balance beam Friday, but UK was once again faced with a top-10 opponent. This time it was No. 5 Auburn, who defeated the Wildcats 196.475-192.550 in Auburn, Ala.